


Forgiveness

by SoftlyTea



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/M, Forgiveness, No Plot, Oral Sex, Sex, Very little porn, and even less of a point, darkly religious overtones, i'm only publishing this to get it out of my head, sex is not normally part of the absolution process but y'know, tortured metaphors and over-reliance thereon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-06-22 23:52:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15593580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoftlyTea/pseuds/SoftlyTea
Summary: No masters or kings when the ritual beginsThere is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sinIn the madness and soil of that sad earthly sceneOnly then I am humanOnly then I am cleanAmen, Amen, Amen





	Forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> Erandur is my absolute favourite Skyrim character. I mean, just LOOK at him. Daedric cultist from a young age, a heavy burden of guilt and trauma, a religious epiphany, years of self-imposed penance... I mean, what's that going to do to a mer? 
> 
> I have a theory that his relationship with his divine is... not as healthy as it could be. He's been beholden to some incorporeal authority figure for all his life, and I worry that he wholesale transferred his veneration of Vaermina straight onto Mara and never learned how to find self-forgiveness, self-direction, self-actualisation. There are so many wonderful fics out there where a DB takes on the role of saving him; of showing what he's missing, of showing him the world he's felt the need to renounce. I've even got an unpublished one of my own, with my DB that I actually ship with Erandur. 
> 
> But as someone with my own negative religious 'history', while not quite cultist-level, Erandur absolutely fascinates me.
> 
> So I don't know what this is, really. There is no plot and very little smut but for some reason I just really wanted to write it. It's been sitting on my computer for months, waiting for me to edit it to be even slightly fit for public consumption, and I don't know how to. So. A quick, scrappy bit of... something, thrown into the void. Make of it what you will.

Guilt is so visceral, thinks Liya.

The old orc had  _ asked  _ her for death. Near-begged her, even, and she knew enough about Orsimer culture to know that he had found the honour he sought on the end of her blade. It didn't stop her feeling sick to her stomach at the thought of it. He was no bandit or assassin. It was not his life for hers. As hard as she tried, she couldn't think why she'd done it.

She couldn't sleep, either. The guilt had settled heavily in the pit of her stomach and taken up residence, and it seemed that nothing could quite dispel it. She had taken a bath, scrubbing her skin so hard it hurt, but her guilt clearly didn't understand that metaphor. She had tried reading in an attempt to calm her mind, but that hadn't worked either - she felt sick every time her book mentioned orcs, blades, blood, or death, and when she did manage to ignore the feelings for a little while, they'd resurface that much the stronger.  She'd done sums in her head, recited alchemical recipes, anything she could think of, all to no avail. And so in the end, she had lain curled up in her tavern bed in sad despair, listening to the late drinking crowd's drunken merriment as they dispersed into the Dawnstar night, and wondering jealously if she would ever feel so happy again.

_ Mara, sweet Mara, forgive me. _

She cries herself to a state somewhat resembling sleep, where the old orc's weathered face drifted through her mind as blood dripped from her blade.

 

\--

 

The following morning brings a strange sort of clarity.

Liya is not a devout woman. That's not to say that she has anything against the divines; she tries to live a good life, occasionally asks them for help (mostly of the 'Julianos, please let this potion come out alright', or 'Kynareth, please make it stop raining before I have to go to the market' variety), but that is really the extent of her interactions with them.

But there is someone who knows all about guilt, and redemption, and divine intervention, and she's in just the right town for him.

 

\--

 

Liya grits her teeth against the violent snowstorm that batters her as she makes the climb up to Nightcaller Temple. Perhaps it is this that accounts for Erandur’s look of surprise as she wins her fight with the heavy wooden doors and stumbles into the relative warmth of his sanctuary.

“Liya, dear one,” he greets her, regaining his composure as she approaches. “What brings you here?”

Liya inhales shakily. "I... I want to pray. At-" she looks uncomfortable, as if she were asking him something unpleasant - "at your shrine. Can I?"

Erandur is taken aback. He didn't think his friend was usually particularly devout, but then, she doesn't usually look this unhappy, either.

"Of course, Liya. Of course you can. Take as long as you wish." And then, as Liya edges nervously towards the shrine, "Do you wish me to leave?"

"No! I mean...." The sudden passion of her response shocked even her. "No. Please stay. I don't want to be alone. I-" She interrupts herself, taking a shuddering breath before addressing the cobblestones at her feet, "I think I did something awful and I don't - I can't - "

Erandur crosses to her and lays gentle hands on her shoulders. She stiffens at his touch.  

"Then I pray, too, that you will find the peace you seek here. She forgives all, Liya, if you approach Her with a spirit of contrition, and..." he chuckles affectionately, squeezes her shoulder, "You seem to have that part mastered."

She smiles weakly up at him.

"Blessings of Mara upon you, my child," he says out of sheer habit.

 

\--

 

Erandur is trying not to look at her, and failing.

He maintains a respectful distance, but his thoughts are anything but. Despite her armour and the weapon she lay on one of the decrepit pews beside her, despite all he knows of her deeds, she looks so vulnerable somehow. Her brow is furrowed in concentration, and her upturned palms stretched towards the shrine tremble occasionally. It's her lips, however, that are his downfall, lips that frame such pure intentions, lips in sacred communion with his goddess...

Lips that he cannot, must not imagine pressed against his own.

_ Mara, sweet Mara, forgive me... _

He cannot hear what she is saying. Her words are a concentrated whisper, but he can hear the intensity in them. Hear, too, her sighing exhale as she pauses, grasping for her next words. She catches her lower lip between her teeth momentarily, frowning, before resuming her litany, and it is no longer any use pretending that his intentions towards her are solely honourable.

Feeling in need of as much forgiveness as his troubled friend, he lowers himself to his knees next to her.

"Lady Mara, I come before you a sinner-"

He can feel her next to him, her warmth, her presence, and his mind is no longer on his prayer, and yet, he persists doggedly on -

_...in thought, word and deed... _ \- no, not in deed, but there is a terrible, shameful part of his mind that wishes he had something more than thoughts to repent.

 

\--

 

When Erandur next dares to glance in her direction, he finds she has moved. She is no longer on her knees before the shrine, her hands are no longer outstretched in trembling supplication. Instead, she is sitting, knees pulled up to her chest, chin resting on her hands, looking up at the statue of Mara above the altar with a gentle little smile. The image grips his heart, and he realises she reminds him of his own journey, that first time he laid his many, heinous crimes at the feet of Mara.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

She turns to him and shakes her head. "No, I don't feel the need to. Thank you, Erandur. I feel a lot better now." And then, in a fit of relief and gratitude, she shuffles across the space between them and pulls him into a soft, affectionate embrace.

She is uncomfortably warm against him, he can feel her body heat through his simple robes, smell her hair, and her arms are holding him close, divines, how long has it been since a woman - since  _ anyone _ \- has held him like this? He prays his most sincere prayer yet, a fervent plea that Liya will not become aware of the effect she is having on him.

"Liya-"

She draws back and scrambles to her feet, frowning in concern.

"I'm sorry, did I - did I do something wrong? I didn't mean to make you feel - "

_ You did nothing wrong _ , he wants to say,  _ Nothing at all, it’s me, all me,  _ but instead he takes a step forward and crushes his lips onto hers.

For an instant, Liya has absolutely no idea what to do. She stands there in dumbfounded shock, not sure what to do with her hands, until his tongue slips between her lips and her decision is made for her. He  guides her back to the altar, lips never leaving her neck, jaw, any part of her skin they could reach and how in  _ Oblivion _ did this happen, anyway, but she hasn’t any time to give the matter any more thought.

‘Liya,’ he growls against her jaw as she backs into the altar, and her hands claw powerlessly at his back in a desperate reflexive attempt to pull him closer. He is incapable of anything else, and besides, her name on his lips sounded like a prayer of its own, but a darker, more primal one than anything he would offer to his goddess; this was a prayer from the very depths of his mortal heart, and resounded with the pull of a past long suffocated by society’s morality.

He would later rationalise all that happened by reasoning that his goddess transcended such arbitrary distinctions between the sacred and profane, and that his attempts to compartmentalise were a relic of his mortal mind, nothing more, but in this moment, such considerations were beyond him. Liya, even in her contrition, had unwittingly led him to a place where such concerns were inconsequential, where he was prepared to abandon all his self-imposed rules and penance for this one, profane desecration.

And he didn't care. Perhaps for the first time since giving his life over to Mara so completely, here he took a measure of it back, and as is so often the way when such decisions have been a long time coming, he did so wholeheartedly.

The moment Liya's thighs make contact with the cold stone of the altar, she is hauled onto it with seemingly no effort at all.

And then he is on her, around her, and there could be no escape even had she wanted there to be; his lips are laying violent claim to her mouth, her neck, her collarbone leaving bruises and bitemarks in their wake, and she does not care.

His hands - hands that she has seen uplifted in prayer, gently smoothing altar cloths - have found their way unflinchingly to the laces on her trousers, and they are not gentle as he pulls them away. He drops to his knees before the altar as he has done so many times, but this time is it to bury his face between Liya's legs with all the fervour of every prayer he's ever said. He gives Liya no time to adjust before he sets a near-frantic pace, revelling in the taste of her, the scent of her. It has been too long, far too long, and so he lets instinct take over. It is not refined, nor considered, but it is the only think he can possibly do in this moment. He laps at her with a near-frantic desperation, and the sounds she is making are so intoxicating, so encouraging, she is practically thrashing against the unyielding stonework, nails clawing it, as he follows her wild movements as she bucks against his face.

She comes with something very close to a scream, and for a strange moment he wonders if it is the most genuine sound ever uttered within these walls.

 

\--

 

So he fucks her on the altar of his beloved goddess, their joining their communion, their shared creed spoken in the universal language of pleasure. Liya's nails raking harsh lines down his back, the sweet pain of it, was all the penitence he would ever offer, the bruises slowly darkening on her neck the only absolution he would give. They were equals in this shared dance of sin and forgiveness, both the redeemers and the redeemed.

The last image Erandur sees before his release claims him is Liya, back bowed and head thrown back in a picture of ecstasy, hair a wild storm against the altar as she takes his sin, his shame, and transforms it into something more perfect than anything he could have dreamt of with a sort of profane grace.

When it is over, there is a moment of uncertainty. In truth, each worry about the effect of their abandon on the other.

"I-," Erandur begins, hoping that the rest of his sentence would form on his lips as it went, some meaningless reflex like  _ I'm sorry _ , perhaps, but he is not, and she doesn't seem to expect him to be. But Liya saves him.

"Thank you," she says, very simply. And, with a gentle squeeze of his arm, she makes her way to the door.

"Liya, wait." He still doesn't know what for, perhaps just that some strange shift has occurred in him and he believes that if he could just hold on to its bearer a moment longer, it would bring some clarity to his mind -

She turns. The smile she wears is so simple, so uncomplicated, that something aches in his soul as he wonders if things could ever be so simple for him. Then he realises that they could be.

So, "Be safe," he says, and "Thank you too," and it's awkward and forced but he can't think of any other way to express it.

Her smile widens and she leaves.

They would never speak of it again. Each found the forgiveness they sought in the other, and words could never do such a thing justice.


End file.
